Category Archives: Industry Insight

Sometimes I think folks outside the industry must think there’s some secret trick to break into publishing. In a way, it makes sense. It’s a global business that’s got its American heart in New York City, like some other industries that people and Hollywood movies often laud: fashion, theatre, magazines, and so on. That must be why we all get asked how we got started, or if we could let a friend of a friend pick our brain over a drink or coffee. So at the beginning of the summer, […]

In the months since the election, a number of bookstores have taken up the activist banner – but they’re far from the first to do so. In fact, booksellers have been doing social justice work for a long time. The 20th century in America saw a boom in stores dedicated to fulfilling and celebrating long-marginalized populations, and the work continues today. So we’ve put together a brief overview of feminist, LGBT, and black-owned bookstores to help you dive into the world of activist bookselling. As the slogan goes, the personal is […]

It used to be I’d read one romance novel a year for my feminist book club. We started this as a way to cleanse our palates after a particularly harrowing read, and then became a fun February tradition, a way to ease back into our monthly meetings after having a holiday break to read our January selection. This year, after our yearly romance read, I wanted more. I started buying discounted romance ebooks, checking them out from the library, and scouring Goodreads for suggestions on what else to read. I […]

This year saw the return of BookExpo – now minus the “America” – to New York City from Chicago. It was also my first time at the show, although I’m not new to conferences and conventions: I’ve been going to AWP and BookCon for the last few years. But those are geared to writers and readers, respectively, and as someone relatively new to the industry, I was excited to see how publishers get down. So on Thursday, I headed over to the Javits Center with a notebook, a phone charger, […]

This article was originally published on our parent site for the book publishing industry, Publishing Trends. * * * Young adult literature has been a huge catalyst and money-maker for publishing over the past few years. Beyond the books, the category’s given birth to several multimillion dollar franchises and new Hollywood stars. With all of the glamour and glitz that can come out of the YA world, it’s easy to forget about the rest of children’s literature. No, not board books or picture books: I’m talking about middle grade. According to […]

The One Story Debutante Ball is one of the most eagerly-anticipated literary parties in New York. This year’s edition was held on the evening of May 12 at Brooklyn’s Roulette Intermedium, a space friendly to cultural events like this one – though there really isn’t anything else quite like this one. True to its name, the literary journal One Story publishes one piece at a time, sent out to subscribers every few weeks in small, handsomely-printed booklets. A given writer can only ever appear once. The journal recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary, […]

There’s life in publishing outside the Big Five – in fact, university presses have been leading the bookish charge for centuries. Unclear on what kind of work these presses do? Interested in getting involved? We’ve put together an overview to get you up to speed. A Brief History In Colonial and Early America, colleges retained their own printers in order to produce catalogs, scholarly publications, and ceremonial materials. The moniker “University Press” was first used at Harvard in 1802, but the university press as we now know it – a […]

Over the last few years, American art and pop culture has begun to focus on diversity in a serious way. This is particularly true of publishing: our industry celebrates free expression but is still predominantly white in both workforce and output. Inkluded is one of a few organizations aiming to change that. While it’s true that publishers have begun to have a difficult conversation about how to move forward, some people are frustrated that not a lot of action has been taken. This frustration brought together Inkluded’s founding members: Michael Mejias […]

The dictionary is one of those funny things that almost everyone has, but doesn’t necessarily use very often, or even think about. Well, there are people that do think about the dictionary very often, like those who have to write it. That’s where Kory Stamper comes in. Stamper is a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster. She writes and edits the dictionary along with her colleagues. As fans of the Merriam-Webster Twitter account and videos (of which Stamper is often the star), we were very excited to hear that there was a book […]

This article was originally published on our parent site for the book publishing industry, Publishing Trends. * * * Comics and graphic novels have been having a good run lately. Comichron and ICv2 – respectively, a database and journal covering the industry – estimate that, in 2015, total domestic sales reached a record of $1.03 billion. In their joint report, they note that in 2015, print sales accounted for a staggering $940 million, with about $535 million coming from graphic novels and $405 million from comic books; compare to 2000, when […]